Today's post, which is multiple hours later than it should be, is what happens when what was supposed to be a minor dental procedure turns into a 3-hour ordeal, complete with unplanned root canal. Please read with a tolerant spirit.

The Iran War, Part I: All the King's Horses, and All the King's Men, Could Not Get the Oil Market Stable Again

The Trump administration is not exactly known for, you know, competence. But even by the low standards that have been set over the past decade, it's really and truly staggering how amateurish this Iran operation has been, and will continue to be.

The latest mind-boggling news comes courtesy of The Wall Street Journal (sorry, subscription needed). Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, et al., definitely had an inkling that maybe, just maybe, a war in Iran might cause disruptions in the global oil market. And so, as everyone now knows, they cooked up a plan: The U.S. would fund insurance for oil tankers, in case anything went wrong while making a mad dash across the Strait of Hormuz.

The only problem here is that nobody in the administration bothered to check with anyone in the actual shipping industry. It turns out that the petroleum companies don't particularly want to take the risk that one of their ships gets sunk since, even if they are covered by insurance, it will take months or years to recoup the funds, while at the same time dealing with a potential PR crisis (think: Exxon Valdez). Meanwhile the companies that provide maritime insurance aren't keen on issuing contracts for trips across a body of water that is in range of hostile missiles, and that could be (and now is) mined.

Once it became clear that Plan A was not going to fly, someone in the White House hastily put together Plan B, which was for the U.S. government to effectively act as insurer. However, nobody in the administration quite knew how that actually works in situations like this. So, a number of somewhat desperate calls were made to insurers in London, most obviously Lloyd's of London, which is famous for insuring anything and everything. As it turns out, the good people at Lloyd's were not interested in sharing their trade secrets for free, other than the not-so-secret insight that this cannot be made to work, under current circumstances.

So then it was on to Plan C, which may have been in someone's back pocket, or may also have been hastily put together. Plan C, which has already been executed, was for the United States and the other 31 members of the International Energy Agency to release a sizable chunk of their strategic reserves into the market, ostensibly making up for the shortages caused by the Iran War. The total amount of oil that will be released is 400 million barrels, of which about 150 million barrels are already in the process of being shipped.

On paper, this might appear to buy the White House a little breathing room. It's estimated that the amount of oil that is being held up by the Iran War is about 15 million barrels a day. So, the 400 million barrels is enough to cover a little less than a month of shortages. In practice, however, it does not seem to have worked. Here's the chart of oil prices per barrel, over the past month:

As you can see, the price per barrel effectively doubled between March 1 and March 9. It settled down a little in the last couple of days, but only a little, and is still flirting with $100/barrel. The average price of a gallon of gas a month ago was $2.94. Yesterday, it was $3.60. Think people might notice that they're suddenly paying $5-$40 more when they fill up their gas tanks?

With the caveat that we are most certainly not experts in oil contracts, we wonder if the release of all of those reserves was actually counterproductive. As we have noted several times recently, petroleum is very much a futures market, with a lot of the big players making their purchases 6 months in advance, so as to lock in their costs. Things have not been quite as volatile as when Russia invaded Ukraine, and the explanation that most analysts give for that is that everyone who buys oil was guessing (hoping?) Trump would TACO, and this would just be a brief disruption. Tapping the strategic oil reserves not only suggests this war could go on for a while, it also means that one of the biggest and most "break glass in case of emergency" options is gone, because the glass has already been broken.

Speaking of Russia, the fact that Plan C clearly did not have the desired effect caused the Trump administration to announce Plan D: It's going to temporarily lift the sanctions on some Russian oil. The U.S. doesn't need the Russian oil, but other nations might. Whether the leaders of those nations are interested in playing ball remains to be seen; the political hit that could come from doing business with Vladimir Putin might not be worth it to them. Meanwhile, Trump and his team are apparently comfortable with compounding their errors in Iran creating some badly needed cash flow for Putin. To many people, that might seem like robbing Peter to pay Paul. On the other hand, if a person happened to be, say, a puppet of Putin, maybe it would not seem that way at all.

We'll soon know if the Russia gambit will work, and if oil prices will settle down. But don't count on that happening. At this point, Big Oil is very leery, and is going to remain so until there's a good answer to what's going to happen with the Strait of Hormuz. If the White House had a good answer, they would already have provided it. We very seriously doubt that Plan E, if some other possibility even exists, will somehow be more efficacious than Plans A. B. C and D were.

And even if the administration does get the petroleum flowing soon, at least some amount of damage has already been done. Recall how long it took to get supply chains operating properly again as the world emerged from the pandemic. Well, the oil supply chain is long and complex and is already seriously disrupted. So, the current forecast is that oil will stay at or near $100/barrel for at least a couple of months, then will be around $80/barrel during the summer, and then $70/barrel in the fall (a.k.a. election time). And this is actually something of a TACO forecast that assumes that the economic upheaval will cause Trump to pull the trigger on the Iran War sooner rather than later. If he doesn't do it, then oil could very well stay at $100/barrel (or go higher) in the latter part of 2026.

And remember, there are oil consumers who are making their purchases right now, and who will be locked in at current prices no matter what happens in a week, or a month. Airlines, for example, are right now securing the fuel that will power their summer vacation season flights. To take another example, substantial portions of the components that make up modern fertilizer come from the Middle East and move through the Strait of Hormuz. The price of various fertilizers has already shot up from $400/ton last year to between $500/ton and $600/ton right now. And farmers can't plant their crops now and fertilize them later, so they're largely stuck with the high prices for their 2026 growing season. Wonder if the roughly 78% of people in the farming business who voted for Trump are beginning to have second thoughts? (Z)

The Iran War, Part II: We Would Say This Is Cause for Alarm

As we have written many, many times, Donald Trump has made a point of harnessing sports as a political tool and weapon. All presidents since William Howard Taft (if not earlier) have done this, but Trump, as he has with so many things, has taken this to extremes. And now, in a reprehensible but also predictable turn of events, he's using sports to help in prosecuting the Iran War.

To start with, someone in the White House (maybe several someones) had the brilliant idea to create propaganda videos equating the Iran War to an exciting sporting event. We've already seen at least a few of these videos; there's one involving bowling, and another one involving e-sports, and surely others we haven't come across yet. But one that really turns the stomach was posted to the White House's official eX-Twitter account earlier this week. We don't embed content from that platform very often anymore, for obvious reasons, but readers really should see it for themselves, so:

Touchdown pic.twitter.com/aDNdqBdRzG

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 6, 2026

For those who cannot bring themselves to watch, it is clips of bombs falling on Iran interspersed with violent hits from football games (most of the hits are illegal, by the way). And, of course, the text that accompanies the video is "Touchdown."

If these videos capture how Trump, Pete Hegseth, J.D. Vance, et al. actually conceive of this war, that is very, very concerning. War is not fun, it is not exciting, and it's not a contest in which the two sides root for their team to score the first touchdown, or home run, or goal. And the less impressed the White House is with the true gravity of the situation, the less likely it is to pull back, or pull out. After all, who punts when they have first down on the opponent's 20 yard line?

From a political standpoint, we also think this approach is absolutely disastrous. To start with, the players shown were not consulted in any way, and certainly did not give their consent to being used to sell the Iran War. Many of them are now speaking out. And we will point out that, for obvious reasons, Black Americans tend to be very sensitive about situations where their labor is used without their consent.

More broadly, we are not experts in what it takes to sell a war in the year 2026. In fact, nobody is, because nobody has, as yet, done it successfully. But we do know a thing or two about how previous wars were sold. As as we have already written a couple of times, a presidential administration has to do a LOT of the selling before the war ever starts. We speak often of "political capital" and so you might call this something like "war capital." Wars always get less popular over time, because of all the killing and dying and such, and so it's politically essential to have a supply of goodwill built up, going in. The Trump administration did virtually nothing to build up "war capital" for the Venezuela invasion, and did even less to build up "war capital" for Iran.

Something else we know about is the propaganda that was used to keep Americans on board during World War II (which was, it should be noted, a fairly popular war overall). Broadly speaking, the propaganda that was directed at American civilians during World War II had one of three messages: (1) The enemy is unspeakably evil; (2) The enemy is someone to be laughed at and ridiculed; and (3) Here's how you, Joe and Joanne Civilian, can help the war effort. Here are well-known examples of each style:

(Z) has probably seen 1,000 World War II propaganda posters, and cannot recall any that presumed to draw a parallel between the war and, say, a baseball game or a football game. That is not a surprise because such a comparison would have been seen as distasteful, and unworthy of the seriousness of the threat the U.S. was facing. We suspect that the parallel will go over just as poorly now, excepting those folks who, like Pete Hegseth, have had an erection since the day Ali Khamenei was killed.

And remarkably, that's not the only "distasteful use of sports in the context of the Iran War" news from this week. The World Cup will soon be upon us, and Iran is scheduled to send a team. Yesterday morning, Trump got on his big-words-small-hands social media platform to share his views on the matter:

The Iran National Soccer Team is welcome to The World Cup, but I really don't believe it is appropriate that they be there, for their own life and safety. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP

There are really only two ways to read this: (1) "Nice team you got there. Shame if anything happened to it" or (2) "We cannot guarantee the safety of the Iranian team, and will not be held responsible if something goes wrong." Either way, it is a veiled threat.

Back in January, we wrote about this same basic subject, and we suggested that, if push comes to shove, FIFA might cut the U.S. out of the loop and stage the tournament in just Mexico and Canada (who are already scheduled to be co-hosts), or maybe Mexico, Canada and Brazil (which has numerous stadiums of the appropriate size). That observation prompted this response from reader S.M. in Toronto, ON, Canada:

Saw the tail end of your item on potentially moving the U.S. allocation of World Cup games to Canada and Mexico, and, well... let's just say "no."

Or, more specifically, it is an absolutely, completely, impossible scenario.

This is, essentially, a U.S. tournament with some satellite matches being played in the partner countries. Simply put, there is zero way for the infrastructure to be put in place at this stage to host the World Cup. Canada has two host cities that have gone through the years and years of preparation to host the event—Toronto and Vancouver. Even if we assume that Canada would only get 30% of the United States' 78 relocated games, that would mean about 28 matches given to the two cities. That would stretch the two stadia to the breaking point in terms of playing surfaces, for starters. There's a reason the World Cup is customarily spread across 10 to 12 stadiums.

And, no, adding additional cities isn't viable. The preparation, especially security, for an event like this takes many months and more likely many years (that was certainly what I remember when I did some work for one of Toronto's Olympic bids). Not to mention that any host city needs a ridiculous amount of hotel capacity, training facilities (every visiting team needs their own and even here in Toronto we're having a bit of trouble accommodating even the limited number of teams that will be playing here), media facilities, trained volunteers, etc. While the Canadian national teams have played in cities such as Edmonton before, there's a vast difference between hosting a one-off international and hosting the World Cup and the crazy volumes of visitors that come with it. And the next-most-available city, Montreal, doesn't have a viable stadium at the moment.

That doesn't even consider the anger the move would cause among fans who have already purchased tickets to games (the United States' stadium capacities are much larger, so 50% or so of those fans would be told "sorry, we don't have a seat for you"), travel that would have to be altered, and the fact that I don't think either country would especially be in the mood to spend additional billions on the tournament on short notice.

We got many, many other messages like this one; we just chose the one from S.M. in Toronto because it was short and to the point.

With all due respect to S.M. in Toronto and those other readers, you are wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrongity-wrong. We direct your attention, in particular, to the 2019-20 NBA season. If, on January 1, 2020, you had told Commissioner Adam Silver, or any of the team owners, or any of the players, or any of the fans that the season would be suspended for 4 months, would eventually resume without fans in attendance, and would feature a championship tournament held in a literal bubble, also without fans, they would have looked at you like you had holes in your head. And yet, that is exactly what happened, thanks to the COVID pandemic. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

It is absolutely true that organizations like FIFA and the IOC have a long history of dealing with distasteful leaders and/or nations, and that they are more than willing to continue that tradition in 2026 (FIFA) and 2028 (IOC). However, what forced the NBA's hand in 2020 was that, absent drastic action, the integrity of the competition, and the safety of the participants, was at serious risk. And that is the kind of concern that could get FIFA and/or the IOC to sit up and take notice. If they believe that the results will be determined by something other than the play on the field, or if they feel that some/many of the athletes are at risk of arrest, or assault, or some other kind of violence, they will have no choice but to do something, just as the NBA (and later MLB and the NFL and the NHL) had no choice. For FIFA, it could be that hastily staged games in Rio, or games played in tiny stadiums, or some other such emergency measure is the least bad option available.

The point here is that Trump very much wants the World Cup, because he wants whatever glory will reflect upon him as he attends the opening/championship match, and as he brags on social media, etc. But when he tacitly threatens the Iranian team (not to mention teams that have Latino players, or brown players, or players from sh**hole countries), he is playing with fire. And it is wrong to believe that FIFA will stick with the United States no matter what, because it just isn't so. There certainly IS a breaking point, the only question is exactly where it is. (Z)

Legal News: Don't Forget, Judges Are Notorious for Being Slow and Steady

Federal judges are a cautious and deliberate lot. They tend to move slowly and carefully, a pace that some describe as "glacial," and that bad actors can exploit. At the same time, it's not necessarily a bad thing to ensure all the t's are crossed and i's are dotted before sending someone to federal prison. ICE agents could learn something from the courts on that score.

But this caution seems to have led to some rather brazen examples of federal agents and attorneys who work for Donald Trump violating court orders. And the courts are struggling with how to handle this unprecedented turn of events. As a general rule, the feds and Department of Justice attorneys are the gold standard for comportment and adherence to the rule of law. But these days, well, while it's tough to turn around an aircraft carrier, federal courts have come to the realization that we're not in Kansas anymore and that the "presumption of regularity" long enjoyed by government attorneys no longer applies. This is particularly true when the real source of the problem stems from a corrupt and lawless attorney general like Pam Bondi. Even Bill Barr had his red lines. But "AG" Bondi believes, like Trump, that she is limited only by Trump's morality. Whatever he says goes. Thankfully, there are grand juries that will follow the law and are not beholden to Trump and his revenge campaign, so some basic guardrails are holding.

And the courts, too, are starting to hold bad actors in contempt. There are, we should point out, two types of contempt charges: civil and criminal. Civil contempt is pretty straightforward. For example, say an ICE agent has violated the court's order and an attorney appears in court and confirms the violation and can't say when/if the order will be followed. The Court can then order a fine of a few hundred dollars a day to be paid by the attorney, the client, or both until the order is complied with. We saw that recently when U.S. District Judge Laura Provinzino ordered assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Isihara to pay a $500 fine for every day that the government failed to return a released detainee's property and identification documents. The items were immediately returned, so no fines were imposed. In other cases, there are a lot of threats and frustration but not much follow through. But the violations of court orders keeps growing, and once that trust and presumption of good faith is gone, it is difficult to get back. For the linked article, The New York Times talked to Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman. "It's not their job or temperament to seek confrontation with the executive branch," he explained. But, noting the unusually pointed judicial language, he added: "If they feel their orders are not being followed, they know that's the definition of a challenge to the rule of law."

A couple of judges have threatened criminal contempt, but none has pulled the trigger... yet. Criminal contempt carries the possibility of jail time, so there are a number of procedural hoops to jump through to satisfy due process. First, there has to be a clear order that all parties and attorneys have notice of. If that order is violated, the court can issue an Order to Show Cause why the party or attorney should not be held in contempt, in which the court sets out the essential facts that constitute the contempt. That is the official start of the criminal contempt process. A date is set for a contempt proceeding in which witnesses are called, just like a mini-trial. The court has to appoint a prosecuting attorney and there is a right to a jury. The evidence has to show an intentional violation and the burden of proof is beyond a reasonable doubt, just like in any criminal trial. Add to that the optics of holding government attorneys in criminal contempt and the reluctance to take that step is a little more understandable. Still, there are signs that the courts' patience is wearing thin. Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz threatened criminal contempt after finding that the Trump administration had violated more than 90 court orders in January alone. "The Court is not aware of another occasion in the history of the United States in which a federal court has had to threaten contempt—again and again and again—to force the United States government to comply with court orders," Schiltz said.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Bryan scheduled a criminal contempt proceeding for March 3 for the repeated violations of orders to return personal property to released detainees. At the hearing, the judge grilled U.S. Attorney for Minnesota Daniel Rosen over the failure to return personal property in multiple cases. As of this yesterday, the judge has not issued a ruling and it is unclear whether the DoJ and ICE have finally complied with all of the court's orders. But the point is, Trump's underlings keep approaching, and often crossing, what is supposed to be a bright red line. At very least, that is going to make it much harder for them to do their jobs, as judges will begin to go through everything with a fine-toothed come. At most, one of these days, maybe sooner rather than later, a judge is going to throw the book at one or more executive branch employees (which will hurt a lot, because law books are very thick). At that point, once a precedent (in a manner of speaking) is set, the floodgates might open. (L)

I Read the News Today, Oh Boy: The Blue Dahlia... Also Likes Teals

We weren't sure how tough last week's theme would be, so the first hint we gave was meant to be generous. It was: "we'll tell you that you might have an advantage if you were in a dusty study right now, eating a cheap peach, and enjoying a nice, large lager." We added and removed and added that "large lager" bit several times, trying to figure out if it was giving too much away, or not enough away. On Saturday, we added: "[W]e actually tried to write a headline about gravestones, but that there was no way to pull it off without being too obvious. Specifically, 'Why would they use the word 'stela' here, instead of 'headstone''?" And here is the solution, courtesy of reader S.C. in Mountain View, CA:

Each headline includes a five-letter word (or name, in the case of Tesla) using each of the letters A, E, L, S and T exactly once each:

• TrumpWatch, Part I: Noem Learns You Don't Steal from Uncle Sam without Uncle Donald's Approval
• TrumpWatch, Part II: Is Bondi the Least Secure Member of the Cabinet Still Standing?
• In Congress: How Will the Slate of Senate Candidates in Montana Shake Out?
• I Read the News Today, Oh Boy: Stale Cupcakes
• This Week in Schadenfreude: Americans Aren't Buying Trump's Tall Tales about his Ballroom
• This Week in Freudenfreude: Much Better Than Buying a Tesla

As for the headline in which this answer appears, it will also have to contain a similar word, yet different from any in the above list. It could be about the leats (water courses) at Knott's Soak City in Buena Park, California, but I think it's more likely to mention former Maryland State Senator John Astle. After all, he will be turning 83 on March 31st, this is a website about politics, and John Astle is a politician. An early Happy Birthday, John!

Astle was too tough to work in there; we pretty much always expected the word for this headline to be "teals." It might have been otherwise, if only Brando had yelled "Stela!" and not "Stella!"

Oh, and some readers did not grasp the first hint. It contains three anagrammed pairs, namely dusty/study, cheap/peach and large/lager.

Here are the first 60 readers to get it right:

G.S. in Basingstoke, England, UK S.K. in Ardmore, PA R.S. in Milan, OH N.H. in London, England, UK J.F. in Fayetteville, NC D.L. in Uslar, Germany J.S. in Chevy Chase, MD J.T. in Philadelphia, PA J.H. in Walla Walla, WA A.O'N. in Wiesbaden, Hesse, Germany J.Y. in London, England, UK A.D. in Vass, NC S.A. in Clinton, WA S.S. in Lucerne, Switzerland M.J. in Oakdale, MN C.R. in Cromwell, CT E.W. in Skaneateles, NY J.S. in Huntington Station, NY P.L. in Skövde, Sweden K.R. in Austin, TX G.M.K. in Mishawaka, IN W.L. in Mol, Belgium J.N. in Zionsville, IN H.B. in Santiago, Chile J.L. in Vanntown, TN M.K. in Seattle, WA M.M. in Dunellen, NJ B.K. in Mystic, CT A.S. in Fairfax, VA E.B. in Hannover, Germany

T.K. in Manchester, MO M.S. in Canton, NY N.C. in Columbus, MS R.R. in Lancaster, PA D.L. in Springfield, IL A.H. in Espoo, Finland C.S. in Maine, NY R.C. in Newark, CA J.P. in Fredericksburg, VA M.T. in Simpsonville, SC M.S. in Groningen, Netherlands D.D. in Highland Park, IL K.L. in Sterling, VA E.W. in Samut Prakan, Thailand B.A. in Edmond, OK R.W. in Aurora, CO M.F. in Norwood, MA S.G. in Durham, NC F.W. in Decatur, GA G.W. in Avon, CT A.D. in Gaithersburg, MD M.T. in Wheat Ridge, CO T.P. in Kings Park, NY C.O. in Marion, IA J.M. in Estes Park, CO D.K. in Bethesda, MD J.B. in Santa Clara, CA B.M. in Chico, CA E.V. in Manchester, MO M.B. in Albany, NY

The 60th correct response was received at 5:46 a.m. PT on Friday. Guess we should have left 'large lager' out, after all.

For this week's theme, it relies on one word on one of the headlines, and on multiple words in the others. It's in the category Movies. For a hint, we'll say that the correct answer could be expressed in a couple of different ways, but that all variants that are correct will include one (and only one) word that is in French. If your answer does not have a word that is French in it, you're barking up the wrong tree. Or the wrong arbre.

If you have a guess, send it to comments@electoral-vote.com with subject line March 13 Headlines. (Z)

This Week in Schadenfreude: Who Grifts the Grifters?

There was a time when we saw article after article that argued that crypto is a serious investment opportunity, with a serious future as a medium of exchange. We don't see those articles anymore, and we suspect that Donald Trump deserves at least some of the credit/blame.

One of the griftiest grifts of his second presidential term was the $TRUMP cryptocurrency. Even if you believe that (some) crypto is legitimate as a holder of value, and a form of currency, $TRUMP is not in that category. It's a meme coin, which means it makes no claims to having any value, and is basically a high-priced souvenir, like those flattened pennies you get at tourist destinations. A United States president should not be using their office to promote shady business ventures, particularly when those ventures are in industries that the U.S. government is supposed to regulate. It makes it all the worse that while people who were buying one or two $TRUMP coins were just buying a souvenir, people who were buying millions of them were either buying access or were effectively tendering a bribe.

In the past few months, the value of $TRUMP coins has cratered. At one point, they had a value of $75 each, thus reminding everyone of the old aphorism that a fool and his money are soon parted. This week, they are down to about $2.75 each, which is a decline of 96%. While Trump and his family did make some real money off the scheme, it's nowhere near the billions that once had stars in the President's eyes. Meanwhile, $TRUMP will soon join Trump vodka, Trump University, the Trump Taj Majal, Trump Airlines, Trump steaks, etc. on the list of business failures for the so-called master of the art of the deal.

That said, the Trumps are trying to get one last grifty gasp out of $TRUMP before it goes the way of the dodo, the carrier pigeon, and Trump's hairline. So, the Trump Organization is staging an event at Mar-a-Lago on April 25 that is advertised as "THE MOST EXCLUSIVE CRYPTO & BUSINESS CONFERENCE IN THE WORLD." All you have to do to score an invite is be among the 297 largest holders of $TRUMP coins as of an as yet undecided cutoff date. Or, if you don't want to risk missing the cutoff, you can be "guaranteed direct access" by committing to buy a mere $5 million in $TRUMP coins.

It's super grifty, but it actually gets worse. The promotional materials overwhelmingly suggest that the Trump who will host the gathering, and who will speak at the "conference" and who will be available to the spenders of $5 million is Donald. But he has not committed to the event, and he is scheduled to be in Washington that day to attend the White House Press Correspondents' dinner. So, in the fine print, it says that the Trump that attendees get might actually be Eric, or Don Jr., or possibly even Barron.

There is obviously a lot of schadenfreude to go around here. We're just not sure who is worthy of more of it, the fellow whose grift is going belly up as we speak, or the folks who are going to drop some serious coin, only to end up eating chicken wings with Barron Trump. Tough call! (Z)

This Week in Freudenfreude: NetZero Could Be an Ace in the Hole for the U.K.

It takes very little knowledge of the politics of climate change to know that the very best way to sell people on eco-friendly policies is not "save the spotted owl" or "the glaciers are melting," since the people who are alarmed by those things are already on board. No, the way to win over the skeptics is with an economic argument: Ultimately, fighting climate change will be cheaper than not fighting it. Much cheaper, in fact.

It would appear that the United Kingdom is about to provide the world with an object lesson in support of that point. That nation's independent Climate Change Committee has just released its seventh annual report assessing the U.K.'s efforts to reach NetZero (all carbon emissions are canceled out by sequestering and other maneuvers). And their number crunchers believe that these efforts will cost Britain about £4 billion per year, or about £100 billion between now and 2050. And the return on investment will be somewhere between £200 billion and £400 billion.

The primary determinant of which end of that scale will come to pass, and the reason we are running this item this week, is—you guessed it—instability in the Middle East. What that means is that in addition to the financial benefits of NetZero, supporters can also make an argument that getting away from oil will keep the U.K. economy from being held hostage by OPEC, Saudi Arabia, Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, etc.

We hope the day will soon come when an American president can sell the great majority of the American people on a climate-change-fighting agenda by saying: (1) the economic benefits are clear, (2) Britain has already proven that, and (3) wouldn't it be nice to be disentangled from the constant issues in the Middle East? Probably that president would have to be a Republican, and a Republican not very much like the ones that the party is favoring these days. That said, there are a few Republicans who try to be pretty MAGA-y on culture wars stuff, but who seem to be reasonably clear-eyed on science stuff. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) leaps to mind, and we would bet that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) also knows climate change is real. He certainly knows that the climate in Cancun in December is way better than the climate in Texas.

The other thing that will ideally help the U.S. pull its head out of the sand is this number: 90. That is the age of Charles Koch, the still-living half of the Kochtopus. The Kochs, who have significant petroleum interests, have been far away the most vocal and most effective anti-green-policy propagandists for at least 20 years, and probably more like 30 or 40. Once Chuck shuffles off this mortal coil, the anti-green forces will have lost their general.

Humans have done a heck of a lot of damage to the one and only planet available for our habitation, and have continued to do so after the flower children started to sound the alarm 60 years ago, and after Al Gore scared the hell out of at least half the country 25 years ago. Still, we try to run about one item every 6 weeks or so that suggests there's still hope.

Have a good weekend, all! And if your dentist says, "Don't worry, this won't hurt a bit," don't believe them. (Z)

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